In brief: Frost/Nixon

(Let's forget about everything else, shall we?)

Taut and suspenseful; unexpected from Ron Howard, especially after I yawned and player-hated my way through A Beautiful Mind and avoided The Da Vinci Code like the plague. The film was one-sided, though, and Nixon is an easy target to vilify. But I didn't know the outcome of these famous interviews, and it played much more exciting than something predictable like Slumdog Millionaire.

And did I mention great cinematography? Because there was great cinematography (by relative newcomer, albeit three-Ron-Howard-film-collaborator Salvatore Totino). In particular: Frost and Nixon in their chairs for the interview, the light changing as the television cameras roll, the backgrounds disappearing and isolating the two men in a sea of black and, in a few spare shots, showing the onlooking crew in silhouette, watching as shadow-ghosts as the two joust through the interview.

Damage control

This article on WSJ.com tells about some Russian professor's theory about the disintegration of the United States by 2010. Granted, the article gives equal time to describing that he's a total fucking crackpot who's obsessed with the KGB, czarist Russia, and post-Cold War, post-USSR breakup bitterness.

I just want to say, in some odd defense, that I have my own future America envisioned in slightly similar terms, and dammit, I came up with them independently. At the bottom of the WSJ post is a map of how the country will be split up after a civil war. I've spent the last thirteen years of my life (since I was ten years old) constructing a vision of a future American after a second domestic war, and I came up with it without some crazy Russian telling me which states will align with other states. Unfortunately, his map is close to mine, though I'd include a few more states in his so-called "Texas Republic." And the eastern seaboard wouldn't align with the E.U.; they'd segment themselves as a unit similar to how the blanket term "New England" is applied to the northeast. Oh yeah, and also, the country would still be America, but not fifty states, and there'd be armed checkpoints between the four territories.

That's enough from me today. Aside from posting a new video, watching two movies, spewing nonsense via Facebook status updates, and, yesterday, posting some bizarre impression of a noise-rock record on my other blog, I think I should just shut up and edit my movie. Too bad I'll be in Detroit for the next four days, with neither my precious media nor internet. At least I'll have some screeners and a few stockpiled Netflixes.

In brief: The Wrestler

A very interesting turn for director Aronofsky, if only after his plagued epic The Fountain. A stand-out "comeback" performance by Rourke, and, unlike Sean Penn in Milk, there are some great supporting roles that fill out the cast. (So if Ledger is a lock for the Best Supporting Oscar, it's a decent assumption that it might come down to Rourke and Penn for Best Actor.) The ending faltered a bit and revealed a weak script compensated by soul-baring performance, but this film can survive on its characters.

Transmissions - The Attic

Low overhead.


Transmissions - The Attic from Jack Kentala on Vimeo.

In brief: Revolutionary Road

A well-shot soap opera. Too much talking; it didn't use the medium until the very end. Not boring. Just tedious.

JDK's Favorite Music of 2008 Part IV: Impressions on Street Horrrsing

I always write "more on this later" as a total misnomer, almost a mental indicator to leave thoughts unfinished. That's why it pains me to write a short blast about Fuck Buttons' phenomenal Street Horrrsing because of the guilt of not editing my film, which I'm trying to do right now.

So, scattered thoughts:



"Sweet Love For Planet Earth" initially turned me off from the group when Pitchfork started giving Street Horrrsing some propers. I didn't get into the screamed vocals of the song's much-later latter half, especially when streaming it off the band's MySpace.

But at the year's end, I downloaded the album out of curiosity, and "Sweet Love" charmed me again with its pretty twinkling at the start and its jackhammer noise somewhere in the midpoint.

I'm amazed, though, that I stuck out "Ribs Out" and got to the meat of the album. Not to discredit "Ribs Out," though. I was listening to it while vacuuming and cleaning and folding laundry, such rote tasks that I could surrender my subconscious mind to physical labor and let my lucid brain wander through the music.

Once "Okay, Let's Talk About Magic" hit, I realized this is epic music. I usually listen to albums with hopes of mining the best tracks for my mixes, but Street Horrrsing is welded together and impossible to sift through without sitting out the whole LP. It plays as a long noise track with distinct shifts, but without coming up for air, this is pure vision quest music; pure sound in the way that Terrence Malick's and Stanley Kubrick's wordless montages are pure cinema.

I often experience my best visualizations through music. Usually I try to hook it into my own cinematic ambitions, like the grandeur of The Chronicle or the ordered chaos of the besieged City Six. At best, some music creates the spark of electricity that let my mind run the gauntlet of imagery, climaxing in a fury of my hand trying to scribble out all the ideas onto my little black notebooks, or hearing the characters stand up and, in handheld medium-close-up, summarize their lives and their ideals in a fiery sermon to an unseen audience.

Street Horrrsing ripped through my usual mental proxy and plugged right into me. And it was bigger than my films; it seemed I could filter the whole world through the "music" (read: noise, to most ears). While other noise-rock favorites of this year, like No Age and Jay Reatard, use pop hooks and melody as a roadmap, Fuck Buttons only keep their noise barely grounded with some pulsing rhythm or some heavy drumbeats. And with this long surge of noise pulsing through my every nerve, I heard and visualized (without any melodrama):

Tortured screams from Abu Ghraib; United 97 passengers rushing the cockpit; jets colliding with the World Trade Centers; New York shrouded in dust clouds; gunmen coldly rampaging through luxury Mumbai hotels (particularly during album centerpiece-whirlwind "Okay, Let's Talk About Magic"); supermassive black holes and stars going nova; presidential assassinations; jihadists running toward envisioned paradise as they storm into a U.S. Army base in Afghan mountains; gods punching dam-sized holes into mountains and breathing ice over the world; lightning blazing through blizzard clouds, and homesteaders galloping through the white blackness, shivering beneath ice-covered blankets; Thomas Adams, half-dead, drifting through outer space before gravity can claim him; latter-class Guardians hovering low and fast over tundra, agile as wasps; time machines; strobe lights; the two members of Fuck Buttons on a stage somewhere, somehow making this music.

I better hold back, lest any readers think that I've permanently gone off The Deep End. But that's what Street Horrrsing did for me, and if most of my favorite records this year play well in the background, in my car, on my PC speakers, or off my iPod, or wherever, letting me commit my attention to normal tasks, this album commands my soul and fulfills a sonic need I never knew I had.

And, back to the music itself: ending the album with the same twinkling glitter that starts "Sweet Love For Planet Earth"? Brilliant and chilling, giving me goosebumps at its mere thought of bookending something with this scope and range.

Progress report / Films of the year

On my hard drive is:

Transmission 1: Rough cut
Transmission 2: Rough cut
Transmission 3: Partial assembly
Transmission 4: Subclipped
Transmission 5: Subclipped
Transmission 6: Subclipped
Transmission 7: Digitized
Transmission 8: Digitized
Transmission 9: Digitized

All these fancy words for a project which I feel I'm working on at a snail's pace. I can't find the time, the thrust, or the rigid discipline with which I plowed through pre-production and shooting. However, at this rate, I should still be able to deliver the final product and push it out on a free, self-pirated torrent in early March; or, as I prefer to cryptically say, "The film will be finished before the snow melts."

My LA connection let me copy screeners of pretty much every film I wanted to see this year but couldn't/didn't. So I'm still neutral on what I think will be my Film Of The Year. Almost by default, it's Che, though it's definitely a flawed masterpiece, mostly stemming from Soderbergh's strict adherence to a cinematographic ruleset that separates the viewer and the characters. He knew what he was doing, but it puts up walls that only a repeated viewing will probably tear down. But the film, in a sentence, is beautiful and long, but amazingly not overlong. I've deliberately held back on spitting out some longer words about it, and maybe that will come later.

But I completely forgotten so far to give any propers to The Wire season 5 and the HBO miniseries Generation Kill. The Wire's final season did a bit of shark-jumping and felt a bit weak in writing, direction, and, by extension, performance. Generation Kill, however, was a grower. I pirated HBO torrents of the seven parts as they came out week-by-week, and I felt a bit lukewarm. I was also confused, and that's bad for a guy (me) who's read the source book Generation Kill once and has read Nate Fick's memoir One Bullet Away four times. But I just watched it a third time now that it's on DVD; I watched it with the sometimes-illuminating, often-distracting commentary, and I'll probably watch it a fourth time (maybe as a marathon). All said, it's probably the most compelling narrative I watched this year, albeit as a long-form, seven-parted series and not a single entity. The same complaint could be lobbed at Che, though.

JDK's Favorite Music of 2008 Part III

Ranking any sort of art against another (here: music) is always arbitrary and trivial. But people love lists, and I've made up my mind. I cheated a bit and included a singles compilations that involves 2006 and 2007 cuts, as well as smushing two albums together simply because the band made both this year.

Thus:

1. Deerhunter - Microcastle (without Weird Era Cont.)
2. No Age - Nouns
3. TV on the Radio - Dear Science
4. Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer
5. Jay Reatard - Singles 06-07 / Matador Singles '08
6. Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
7. Crystal Castles
8. Fleet Foxes
9. Marnie Stern - This Is It...
10. Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster... / We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

I'm still playing catch-up with a huge quantity of 2008 music, mostly culled from lists arranged by friends and, well, Pitchfork. Last year I didn't even give Spoon's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga a second spin after my initial listen, and now I can't believe I didn't put that in last year's top three. If there's any such revelation with the music I overlooked this year, I'll write something about it.

Otherwise, there's a gigantic post floating around in my head that breaks down all the music I liked this year and why I liked it, but since said massive post gains massivitity each day, I'm starting to dread such a task. Maybe a simple list will suffice for the four people that read this blog.

JDK's Favorite Music of 2008 Part II

Another year-end, and, like most casual hipsters, I try to compile some sort of definitive-for-me playlist of 2008 songs. I've been making twelve-track mixes for the better part of the year, so this is mostly the Best Of those. I'm getting better in my sequencing, though, so, if nothing else, it flows semi-decently. Unless you hate the songs.

Also, this is totally unintentional and not some Anti-Hipster statement, but my favorite tracks off most of 2008's acclaimed albums don't fall in line with everyone else's favorites. For example, I prefer Deerhunter's "Agorophobia" slightly more than "Nothing Ever Happened"; I'm not sick of "Sequestered in Memphis" insofar as to rate "Constructive Summer" higher; I suppose off Retard's compilations, my favorites were his lo-lo-fi demo of "Nightmares" off Singles 06-07 and the hard-to-fit-on-a-mix, gorgeous acoustic number "No Time" here; I legitimately like "Things I Did When I Was Dead" the best off Nouns; ditto for "Family Tree" versus the rest of the album; The Walkmen's "New Country" did more for me than "In The New Year"; and finally, I love most of Crystal Castles' self-titled release, but while the last track "Tell Me What To Swallow" totally throws off the balance of the Ataris-on-fire schizophrenia of the album, it's my favorite piece of semi-shoegaze this year next to Deerhunter's "Vox Celeste" off Microcastle's ugly sister, Weird Era Cont.

Best of 2008 zip
1. Deerhunter - Agoraphobia
2. Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
3. The Hold Steady - Sequestered in Memphis
4. Jay Reatard - Always Wanting More
5. Tokyo Police Club - Your English Is Good
6. Destroyer - My Favorite Year
7. No Age - Things I Did When I Was Dead
8. TV on the Radio - Family Tree
9. The Walkmen - New Country
10. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks - Out of Reaches
11. Weezer - Pork And Beans
12. Wolf Parade - California Dreamer
13. Annie - Take You Home
14. Cut Copy - Strangers in the Wind
15. Marnie Stern - The Crippled Jazzer
16. Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
17. David Holmes - Holy Pictures
18. Born Ruffians - Kurt Vonnegut
19. Crystal Castles - Tell Me What To Swallow

And here's a 12-track mix mostly of 2006 and 2007 songs that I overlooked in those years, plus a few old classics. Or maybe just the inclusion of some Pavement.

Best Non-2008 zip
1. Joy Division - Transmission
2. Pavement - Cut Your Hair
3. Jay Reatard - Nightmares
4. A Place To Bury Strangers - To Fix The Gash In Your Head
5. The Joggers - Every Other Word
6. Built To Spill - Carry the Zero
7. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps (Edit)
8. The National - Geese of Beverly Road
9. Spoon - Finer Feelings
10. Cut Copy - Bright Neon Payphone
11. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel
12. Battles - Race Out

Impressions: Che Part One: The Argentine

My LA connection said he knew no one who wanted to watch his screener of Che, so, like the rabid Soderbergh/Red camera jacakal I am, I snatched it up, and last night I watched Part One of the four-plus-hour epic. So before I pop in Part Two, I need to get some words down.

First of all: The much-discussed Red camera. I first had a nerdgasm when I saw some promo movies of it. Then I had another when I saw a grainy Che trailer, which confirmed that the 35mm-sized sensor does in fact give shot footage the elusive depth-of-field that only 35 offers; I have a pretty good eye when it comes to determining what's Super-16 and what's 35, so that's a key feature. However, I watched the Che trailer proper in 1080p off Apple's trailer site, and I became a little dismayed; it looked like, while Red gave the proper depth of field and (equally important) motion blur of film, the colors looked a little too digital. The giveaway were flesh tones, which veered toward digital pink instead of a neutral tan.

All of this was cast aside once I started the film. After all, anything in HD looks, well, digital, even if it has celluloid roots, and Che on my CRT standard-def television looked beautiful. Without going into enormous details, I'll just say that as Red keeps getting better and making enormous promises, I'll drink their Kool-Aid and say, Yeah, this is the future of cinematography. However, all costs saved in production are deferred to haphazard post, which doesn't have a standardized Red workflow, meaning that non-Soderbergh filmmakers basically have no access to finish their films with a theater-ready output like 2K or 4K. If you're interested, just google up the Indiewire article about Soderbergh, the Red, the SCRATCH system, and indie-filmmaker Arin Crumley's near-impossibility in trying to finish his experimental feature shot on the Red. I think the article had a quote saying that the somewhat-necessary SCRATCH system "looked like the cockpit of a 747."

But the cinematography leads to another point. Here, more than anywhere else in his filmography, shows Soderbergh really maturing as a top-notch cinematographer. His early work seemed more like a I'll-shoot-it-because-no-one-else-will ethos, namely in his little-seen gem Schizopolis (albeit available on a beautiful Criterion edition, even through Netflix) and, much later, experimental-narrative work like Full Frontal and Bubble. I think he started a huge industry trend with Traffic, in which his color-coding of the plotlines gave him the excuse to drench the film in "improper" colors and leave sources uncorrected; it gave the Michael Douglas storyline a blue-dawn cast, and there was equal experimentation done with the dirty, acid-washed grit of all scenes shot in Mexico.

That last point is interesting, though, as a historical reference point. The Criterion DVD of Traffic has some amazing quasi-tutorials of the processes used to get the "Mexico look." Those were done to the actual camera negative, in some bygone era before the mass proliferation of digital intermediates, and which any seatbelt-wearing cinematographer would feel like being driven off a cliff in taking those risks. Also terrifying were the pre- and post-flashing (sorry, I forget which, specifically) used for the halo-glow look of all the California footage. Now, of course, all this in done in post-production, once the negative gets scanned and relegated to a refrigerated vault.

Soderbergh also has done some radical experimentation in the Ocean's trilogy. I guess when he had an almost-guarantee of grossing over a hundred million for each, Warner let him do whatever he wanted, and there's a lot of craziness going on that would induced mass-cringing from any ASC-approved cinematographer. Bubble had its own HD-as-HD vibe, and Solaris had a proper, properly-white-balanced look that, in the DVD commentary, Soderbergh credits as the unsung labor of his gaffer.

Che, however, shows some mature work. There's a discipline usually absent in Soderbergh's experimentalism; he sticks mainly to tripods, and he only goes shaky-handheld (his greatest strength) for the intercut sequences when Che visits New York and the United Nations. This seems almost visually necessary, like the eavesdropping of a documentary reporter armed with a 16mm Arri S and some high-speed black & white stock. The Cuba scenes are lush and vibrant; jungle colors and pastel hues once Che, Castro, and the guerillas make their way toward towns and cities. Even the many, many battle sequences stay strict and anchored down, whereas an opportunistic filmmaker would go handheld for the stomach-wrenching visceralism most audiences are used to by now. What a shock for a filmmaker to shoot gunfights in which we can actually tell what's going on. (Wally Pfister and The Dark Knight, I'm looking at you.)

The film itself has received most of its criticisms from this restrained approach. There are few close-ups; my impression of the film is that there were none, save for the del Toro-as-Che introductory shot at the very beginning of the film, super-close and grainy-black-and-white. This ties into the story and the direction itself. Soderbergh keeps Che at a distance. We don't know what he's thinking. The film eschews biopic trends of clawing through a character's psychology with voice-overs and some extreme close-ups. There is some intermittent voice-over culled from a non-linear parallel storyline of Che giving a radio interview in New York, but it's mostly expository, and infrequently indicative of his mindset. Visually, it matches; when he accosts a slacking guerilla, his back is often to the camera, and when he makes an important choice, he betrays no emotion. This, historically, is accurate, but for many, it is, cinematically, improper.

Going back to some Soderbergh interviews I've read, he talks about his approach to Part One: The Argentine. It's based on Che's retrospective journals, and, like all history, hindsight is twenty-twenty. The film assumes some prior knowledge, but it's pretty clear that the Revolution succeeds in Cuba, and, knowing that, it justifies the camera restraint and the calm, metered editing. Colors are warm and inviting; they evoke nostalgia without need for sunsets or wide shots of the ocean. So, visually, it's somewhere at the midpoint of the distracted naturalism of John Toll and Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line and, in terms of camera rigidity and filming battles somewhat-statically, Patton.

I'm eager to start watching Part Two. Soderbergh says this is when Che's journal was extemporaneous and agitated, slogging through Central and South America not knowing if they'd live to see another day. He specifically mentioned using a harsher color palette and composing shots off-balance and improvisational, "like early Friedkin" (which, I assume, means The French Connection). Soderbergh has a brilliance for handheld work, and I'm expecting aforementioned stomach-wrenching visceralism in Part Two: Guerilla. Soderbergh defied my own expectations and showed me that he can rub elbows with cinematography's elder statesmen in terms of composition and palette in Part One. And as a card-carrying Soderbergh fanboy, I'll think of Che as one four-plus-hour film, and expect that the second half shows a descent into grit and dirt and raw cinematographic beauty. As a whole, it's a shame that he has to shoot under the pseudonym "Peter Andrews" because of guild rules, since I'd nominate Peter Andrews for the best camerawork and lighting this year.

Afterthoughts: Steven Spielberg's A.I. and Stanley Kubrick's A.I.

I first saw A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in theaters in 2001. I'd heard it was originally based on a concept by Stanley Kubrick, and I had read some article about its Kubrick origins, but at that point, at age fifteen, I didn't really know what A Stanley Kubrick Film meant. All I knew was that, at Blockbuster, the DVD cases for A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, and some other inaccessible-looking films were white boxes proudly labeled "The Stanley Kubrick Collection." I had seen Full Metal Jacket and liked it; I had seen A Clockwork Orange and disliked it; I had seen 2001: A Space Odyssey on AMC and was confused, albeit abstractly knowing I'd understand it better some day, when I was Older. (I later claimed and claim that the film changed my life, though I don't know when I started using that choice phrase.)^a

I liked A.I. when it came out. I liked pretty much everything. When it came out on DVD I bought it because, when you're fifteen and don't give a shit about saving for college, even a part-time job creates hordes of disposable income. I was wise enough, however, to exchange my erroneously-purchased fullscreen edition of A.I. (when such a ghastly practice was still fairly commonplace) for the widescreen edition because of a shaky lie I told Best Buy customer service.^b

I became a film snob in early 2002, when I started subscribing to Netflix before it reached critical mass. I binge-watched between five and ten films a week. I home-film-schooled myself through Criterion Collection commentaries and DVD special features. I recalled my Kubrick-obsessed friend and plowed through his favorite director's filmography, Killer's Kiss through Eyes Wide Shut (which I recalled from its cryptic 1999 ad campaign as "Kubrick's final masterpiece"), even though I didn't particularly like some films. I watched 2001 and formed my own philosophical view about it and deciphered its ending by cheating and reading Arthur C. Clarke's unambigious novelization. A different friend and I watched, awestruck, the Beyond The Infinite ending in perfect synchronization with Pink Floyd's "Echoes." And to our credit, we weren't stoned.

Now, I place Kubrick in my upper pantheon of directors; I went to the Gene Siskel Center during my Chicago schooling to see Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut in their "proper" aspect ratio during a Kubrick retrospective; I goosebumped throughout most of a crisp 70mm print of 2001 at Chicago's Music Box; The Stanley Kubrick Collection is my prized DVD set, and until Warner Bros. gives the film decent high-def transfers (I heard the Full Metal Jacket Blu-ray, among others, is jagged as hell), and, well, until I get an HDTV and Blu-ray player, I won't buy any replacement for it.

So A.I. is some tough ground for me. Who's film was it? Who's film is it? Spielberg's or Kubrick's?

I watched A.I. for, probably, the fourth time yesterday. It's been a while since I last saw it; the last time was definitely during a period where, if only through the passing of time and some intermittent research and readings, I knew far less about Stanley Kubrick and Stanley Kubrick Films than I do now.

It is strange, though, that there's a wealth of material that gives a firm answer to the question of Spielberg vs. Kubrick in terms of authorship. I've watched all the A.I. DVD special features; have read all the Wikipedia and IMDb trivia; watched the Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures feature-length documentary, during which Spielberg tells his account of how A.I. was passed on to him before Kubrick's death, but after Kubrick spent years of development on the project; and, most recently, and most eye-opening, I've read several thousands of words' worth of A.I. history in the relatively-recent, super-definitive book The Stanley Kubrick Archives.

So now, after spilling out pretty much everything I've had to say about my obvious Kubrick fascination (which will be even more obvious once some people see my film and note its vicious emphasis on Kubrickian symmetry), I feel a bit out of steam. But as mentioned, The Stanley Kubrick Archives puts a twist on my understanding of Spielberg-Kubrick's A.I. Most interesting is the synopsis of Kubrick's original story treatment, which goes into a great deal of the plot. More interesting: Spielberg's A.I. follows the treatment almost exactly. The only plot difference is a missing chunk from Kubrick's treatment that occurs after the Rouge City escape and preludes the Manhattan scenes with a journey through a sort of biohazard zone in which David and Joe discover fringe remnants of human ruins.

I'm conflicted because the story of A.I. is so wild and long. Only some slivers were taken from Brian Aldiss's short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long," and, for the most part, the story is largely Kubrick's invention. Contrast that with the body of Kubrick's work, which is all derived from literary sources, albeit with generous artistic liberty involved (see: Kubrick's Shining versus Stephen King's appalling ABC miniseries "The Shining"; and, while I haven't read Gustav Hasford's "The Short-Timers," there's a ton of Michael Herr's "Dispatches" in Full Metal Jacket). What's so striking, I suppose, is that most Kubrick films have brief, easily-summarizable stories; they have them almost out of necessity, as though Kubrick knows that his sumptuous visuals and intense character studies need only a few bare plot bones to rest atop. A.I., in contrast, is a long, long, plot-heavy journey, much longer than Tom Cruise's odyssey in and around New York in Eyes Wide Shut, longer than that in Barry Lyndon, and, well, maybe not as long as 2001's. Most Kubrick films seem content to stay in place; partly because of the director's preference to shoot in controllable studios than bear the unpredictable weather of the outside world.

I'm at the point now, though, where I can imagine Kubrick's A.I. in stark contrast to Spielberg's. First of all, Kubrick's take wouldn't be shot by Janusz Kaminski, scored by John Williams, and edited by Michael Kahn; Kubrick would shoot and cut, use pre-existing music (as actually happened as Kubrick liked 2001's temp score so much he canned Alex North's original compositions for the film), and hire some puppets to take the screen credit for it. Visually, Kubrick also wouldn't give himself an homage by shooting through light fixtures, which Spielberg does twice in A.I. and which Kubrick did a few times in Dr. Strangelove. Also: Spielberg apes Kubrick to an enormous degree in the Neo Ice Age end of the film, which starts with a low track of abstract snow drifts quite reminiscent of the beams of light and color in 2001's slitscan stargate sequence; add to it the chilling choral arrangement that stands at a midpoint between typical Spielberg-John Williams harmony and the dissonant dirge of Gyorgy Ligeti's haunting music in 2001; and, of course, both involve a strange spacecraft that, like Bowman's Discovery pod, hurtles across space and time through unknown territory. (Or, unfortunately, a future-frozen New York that, somehow, has intact Twin Towers.) To Spielberg's credit, the imagery of that sequence gives me chills. It scratched the itch of want for more of 2001, far moreso than 2001's bastard sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

But I imagine Kubrick's A.I. would revel in its ambiguous creepiness. Whereas Spielberg gives a human warmth to robot David's love of his human "mother," Monica, through warm colors and a John Williams score, Kubrick would probably leave it open and unanswered. Spielberg, though, veered from Kubrick's treatment at the very end. Kubrick had Monica awakening the morning after her supposedly-only living day and continuing to live, whereas Spielberg has her fall asleep into a graceful dream-death, David doing likewise beside her, and Teddy climbing onto the bed to wait out a long eternity. Intentionally or not, that's a terrifying thought once you get rid of Williams' score and the warm colors of The House. Think of it: an eternal purgatory in an imaginary house culled from lukewarm memories, or a reality down in that ice with skinny, glasslike future-Mechas so alien that you'd yearn for an earnest, second, permanent death.

On second thought, maybe Kubrick's idea is just as unsettling: his treatment ends with Monica and David in the memory-house on Monica's miraculous second-day awakening, "waltzing" as the two did on the day of David's love-imprinting. Which reminds me of another keystone of the film that, as aforementioned, gets masked by the sentimentality of Williams' score and Kaminski's empathetic cinematography: how genuine is a robot's programmed love? A love demanded during the conscious imprinting process? You can stop loving the robot, but the robot can't stop loving you, barring its own destruction and disintegration into electronic ash.

So I'm back where I started: uncertain. At my own anticlimax. At the same crossroads wondering about authorship of an idea, no different than wondering what Orson Welles' Magnificent Ambersons would've been had RKO not recut it, nor how Terrence Malick's six-hour cut of The Thin Red Line played, or one of the other million questions about unmade films, or botched films, or, in the case of A.I., a half-masterful, half-confused journey split down the middle between two polar-opposite, visionary directors.

Just one true afterthought after a post intended to run a mere paragraph or two: Kubrick died in early '99, mere days after he finished a cut of Eyes Wide Shut. A.I. came out in 2001 (The Year of the Space Odyssey, supposedly). For a film of A.I.'s massive scope, with that much tech and crew behind it, Spielberg must've been so affected by his friend Stanley's death that he dropped everything and got right to work on A.I. I guess it's no surprise it came out so quick; Kubrick had it lingering in his mind for years. But did Spielberg? Or was he just following notes?

^a I also had a friend in junior high and high school who was a Kubrick aficionado, who seemed repulsed that I couldn't guess his favorite Kubrick film, Barry Lyndon. I only found the right answer after he told me the letters of the title were B and L, and only then, after I checked IMDb. He also told me he had a prized VHS copy of Kubrick rarities like Fear and Desire and the short documentaries Day of the Fight, Flying Padre, and The Seafarers. It only took seven-and-a-half years for me to catch up to him and get a pirate collection of the aforementioned films, plus the script for Napoleon, the original soundtrack of The Shining, and a surprisingly-boring radio interview with Kubrick in 1966, when he was mid-production on 2001. I haven't watched the rare films, though, out of a combination of fear, reverence, and my eyes seeming to perpetually glance over the all-caps "KUBRICK" folder dragged smack into the middle of my Windows desktop wallpaper.

^b "The special features don't work." "They work on our machine." "Can I just exchange it for another copy?" "Sure. Go grab one off the shelves... Hey, this one is widescreen. Don't you want the fullscreen?" A forced shrug and, "Eh. This one will do fine."

^cThe monolith opens a stargate and shoots Bowman to an alien hotel room / zoo where Bowman ages, dies, and is rebirthed as a star child.

JDK's Favorite Music of 2008

This might sound ridiculous, but I'm going to list my favorite albums of 2008 before Pitchfork does. Because, well, I don't want to look like a Pitchfork copycat. (Though, come on, "Blind" by Hercules and Love Affair as song of the year what the fuck?) I plan on doing this a bit more thorough, with explanations and some other fun, but for now, I'll just toss up a list.

My four favorite albums of the year (in alphabetical order):

Deerhunter - Microcastle

No Age - Nouns

TV on the Radio - Dear Science

Wolf Parade - At Mount Zoomer

Other favorites (alphabetical):

• Annie - Don't Stop
  
• Born Ruffians - Red, Yellow, and Blue
  
• Brendan Canning with Broken Social Scene - Something For All Of Us...
  
• Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
  
• Cut Copy - In Ghost Colors
  
• Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
  
• Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
  
• The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
  
• The Hood Internet vs. Chicago / vs. Tobacco and Aesop Rock / Mixtape Vol. III
  
• Jay Reatard - Singles '06-'07 / Matador Singles '08
  
• Los Campesinos! - Hold On Now, Youngster... / We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
  
• Marnie Stern - This Is It...
  
• Max Richter - 24 Postcards in Full Color
  
• The National - The Virginia EP
  
• Stephen Malkmus - Real Emotional Trash
  
• Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
  
• The Walkmen - You & Me

Only listened to once but really like:

• Blitzen Trapper - Furr
  
• David Holmes - Holy Pictures
  
• Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreaks
  
• M83 - Saturdays = Youth
  
• Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom
  
• Tokyo Police Club - Elephant Shell

Transmissions - Soap

Transmissions - Soap from Jack Kentala on Vimeo.

Impressions: Milk

Great performance by Sean Penn amid an otherwise-unmemorable ensemble cast. An interesting story weighed down by the conventions of biopics and, god forbid, an intermittent voice-over that gave it some stylistic imbalance. Also, the cinematography did little, if anything, visually evocative; that is, other than stock footage of Milk's candlelight vigil-march. Maybe I'm too stuck in the post-Traffic world of being bored with a film that's properly white-balanced all the way through.

But Normal People see films for the story, and this story is very topical given the current/shifting political climate. If Middle America can stomach Brokeback Mountain, Milk should get some good views given its momentum from its awards-season nominations.

Player Hating: Wall-E

I'm going to take some time off cutting my film in order to serve up my beef with Wall-E. It largely stems from one of my Rules of Film: I don't like Pixar movies.

To save myself some typing on this atrocious iMac keyboard, it boils down to this: when Pixar tries to appeal to kids and adult, both get short-changed; the adults sit through the bland story and paper-thin characterizations, and the kids give blank stares when anything remotely-mature flashes on screen. (In this case, though, I dare invoke the T-word - theme - that kids will walk away without giving a second thought to. Even though, well, the theme is massively hypocritical. How Disney greenlit an anti-consumerism film is beyond conscious thought; the irony of parents buying Wall-E toys and the Wall-E video game for their children is delicious.)

But as for that last bit, Wall-E is little more than grade-school criticism of hyperconsumerism and Fat America. Shove that into 98 minutes of endless slapstick, pretty visuals, vomit-inducing Apple winks (like Eve's design as an all-white Mac droid, or the blatant, obnoxious "dawn of time" sound that is shared by both Wall-E after a solar recharge and powering-on Mac computers), nonsense madcappery, and unapologetic naivete.

Scratch some of that; the end credits were a stroke of genius, even though they had nothing to do with the film.

All this talk was spurred by the LA Film Critics' awarding Wall-E as the best film of the year. (Thank god no one has mentioned The Dark Knight as 2008's Best yet, since people were somehow tricked into thinking that turd had any redeeming cinematic value.) I didn't see Wall-E in the theater, never intended to, but its DVD release and the Critics' choice made it one of my year-end compulsory viewings.

It also comes down to this: my admission that, visually, Wall-E is a brilliant film. It's brilliantly designed. But for what purpose? A sliver of story? One shred of meat on a rat-gnawed bone? It's wasted potential. It'd be like hiring Stanley Kubrick to direct a Pepsi commercial.

I'll bookend this post with some halfhearted mention that I'm going to continue my Saturday night with editing Transmissions. I was going to write a post about how the recently-watched Cloverfield is in the same league - brilliant visual execution floating atop a lame-duck story - but that's for another time.

Before I see Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, and Frost/Nixon, I'll be an asshole and call the extended edition of The New World as the best film of the year. Otherwise, it'd be a close call between If.... and Two-Lane Blacktop as the best film I saw this year.

Transmissions - Phonetics

Transmissions - Phonetics from Jack Kentala on Vimeo.

Progress report: Post

Deck back. Rage subsiding. Digitizing. Subclipping. Happy.